A former federal prosecutor hired to clean up the Laborers International
Union of North America plans to bring internal charges to oust
union president Arthur A. Coia for associating with members of
organized crime, government officials said. Coia would be tried
before a union hearing officer, also a former federal prosecutor,
in an unusual arrangement in which the Justice Department has
essentially given an in-house union prosecutor the task of rooting
out corruption in the 700,000-member union. The charges, labor
experts said, would represent the first time that an internal
union monitor has moved to oust a union's president.

Under the arrangement with the laborers, the Justice Department
reserves the right to bring criminal charges against Coia or any
other official of the union. Republicans had criticized the Clinton
administration for letting the union conduct its own investigation,
but administration officials said Wednesday that the charges against
Coia would indicate that the arrangement has worked well.

Still, a move to bar Coia from the union would in many ways embarrass
the Clinton administration. Coia's union was one of the three
most generous contributors to President Clinton's 1996 inauguration,
buying $157,000 in tickets. The union has also been one of the
biggest donors to Democratic coffers, giving the party and its
candidates $2.6 million in the last campaign cycle. In addition,
Hillary Rodham Clinton has spoken to a laborers' convention, and
Coia and Clinton have become so friendly that they have exchanged
expensive golf clubs as gifts.

The accusations come at a difficult time for the nation's labor
movement, which has already been thrown off balance by the fund-raising
scandal of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Coia is
one of the nation's most prominent union leaders and has been
elected president of the AFL-CIO's organizing committee at a time
when labor is focusing on recruiting new members. Federal officials
who spoke only on the condition of anonymity said that Robert
Luskin, the laborers' in-house prosecutor, has told them he will
move to bar Coia from the union on various charges, including
associating with mobsters, acquiescing in letting mobsters run
parts of the union and receiving favors from companies with which
the union has contracts. These officials said Luskin has told
them he will file the charges by the end of this month.

Throughout the investigation, federal prosecutors have looked
over Luskin's shoulder, often giving him questions to ask Coia
in the six depositions he has made. Howard Gutman, a lawyer for
Coia, said, "As far as I know, no final decisions have been
made on whether or not to bring charges." In an interview
last year, Coia said, "I am not controlled, never were, not
influenced by, and never were," by organized crime.Coia is
the son of a former secretary-treasurer of the laborers' union
who federal prosecutors say worked closely with Raymond Patriarca,
the crime boss of New England who died in 1984.

Coia does not fit the image of a traditional labor boss: he often
drives Ferraris and he has an ocean-front mansion in his native
Rhode Island.His union represents a varied group of low-paid workers,
including brick carriers, asbestos removers, tunnel diggers and
toxic-waste haulers.

Federal officials declined to discuss details of the charges that
Luskin plans to bring. In the past, Justice Department officials
have pressed Luskin to investigate Coia's friendship with Raymond
Patriarca Jr., who, federal prosecutors say, inherited the position
of crime boss of New England after his father died.

Federal investigators have also encouraged Luskin to examine a
trip to Chicago in which union officials pushed Coia, according
to his own testimony, to meet with people who Coia said he discovered
at the time were Mafia figures. Coia said he was told to meet
them to obtain permission to take a top position in the laborers'
union. Coia said he was taken aback by that Chicago trip because
it taught him the extent of mob involvement in the union. But
federal prosecutors have questioned Coia's assertions as disingenuous,
insisting that he long knew about the laborers' links to organized
crime.

Federal investigators have also voiced concern that Coia once
appointed John Serpico, a Chicago laborers' official who has admitted
associating with mob leaders, to be a hearing officer on corruption
cases within the union.

Government officials said it was possible that Coia would resign
from the union and its presidency before charges were brought,
thus rendering the internal investigation moot. But these officials
said the evidence turned up in the internal investigation could
be made available to the Justice Department for further investigation.

In an unusual move widely criticized by congressional Republicans,
the Justice Department dropped plans in 1995 to file a 212-page
civil racketeering complaint that sought to oust Coia and take
over the union on the ground that it was wedded to organized crime.
To avoid lengthy and expensive litigation, the Justice Department
agreed to let the laborers name an in-house prosecutor and conduct
its own anti-corruption investigation.

Luskin, a former organized-crime prosecutor now in private practice
in Washington, declined to discuss the status of the case against
Coia. He said that in his three years as in-house prosecutor he
has never commented on the status of an investigation.

In a telephone interview, Luskin said: "We have stated publicly
that we are aggressively pursuing any credible allegations against
Coia. This is a clear component of the commitment we made to the
Justice Department, and we have and will fulfill that commitment."

But federal officials said that in mid-October Luskin told them
that he would file formal charges that would be heard by an internal
union judge, Peter Vaira, who was U.S. attorney in Philadelphia
and head of the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force in Chicago.

Under its 1995 consent decree with the laborers, the Justice Department
reserved the right to take over the union if it grew unhappy with
the progress of the union's internal housecleaning. In addition,
the Justice Department maintained the right to indict laborers'
officials independent of whatever internal charges are brought
against them.

While the charges against Coia are an embarrassment to Clinton,
they can also be seen as a vindication. Pointing to Coia's friendship
with Clinton and to the laborers' donations to Democrats, Republicans
have repeatedly asserted that the Clinton administration had agreed
to a sweetheart deal in letting Coia's union police itself.

But Justice Department officials defended the arrangement as a
money-saving experiment to see whether a union could cleanse itself.

Clinton administration officials are now pointing to the charges
against Coia to assert that the agreement was an effective mechanism
to clean up the laborers, while saving the federal government
years of expensive litigation.

John Russell, a Justice spokesman, said, "We're constantly
vigilant with the consent decree and feel as if it's meeting its
purpose."

Coia has repeatedly denied associating with mob figures and asserts
that he has sought to rid the union of mob influences ever since
he became its president in 1993.

He acknowledged, however, that some laborers' officials associated
with organized crime. "My knowledge of pockets of corruption"
in the laborers "is limited," Coia said last year. "I
had an idea it was a good union. It might not have been as good
as I thought." Some federal officials voiced fears that someone
even more involved with organized crime might replace Coia if
he was ousted by the in-house prosecutor.

Indeed, many labor leaders say Coia has been an exemplary union
president. He has been gung-ho about organizing new members, investing
millions of dollars in such an effort. He has fought for a higher
minimum wage and against Republican efforts to reduce spending
on occupational safety.

In the interview last year, Coia acknowledged knowing the younger
Patriarca, saying they met innocently in a lawyer's office in
the early 1980's when both Coias and the elder Patriarca were
charged in a kickback scheme. Those federal charges were thrown
out under the statute of limitations.

Coia, who breeds Rottweilers, said that after meeting the younger
Patriarca they agreed to try to mate Rottweilers. The efforts
failed to produce puppies.